[Big Issue founder, John] Bird revealed in 2010 "My guilty secret is that I’m really a working class Tory. There, I’ve said it. I’d love to be a liberal because they’re the nice people but it’s really hard work – I can’t swallow their gullibility and I think their ideas are stupid. I’d love to be someone who wonders around in a kind of Utopian paradise seeing only the good in everybody but I just can’t. I support capital punishment for a start. I know this will destroy my reputation among middle-class liberals but I’m 64 now and I should be able to breathe a bit. Wearing the corsetry of liberalism means that every now and then you have to take it off."

A DISTINGUISHED barrister has called on Theresa May to ban “left-wing” marches in Piccadilly after damage to the Ritz at anti-cuts protests earlier this year.

John Beveridge QC (pictured) co-founder and chairman of amenity group the St James’s Conservation Trust, said such marches attracted “ragtag” protesters who “become violent and urinate all over the place”.

He added: “I have written to the Home Secretary, who has responded in the usual pusillanimous and ambiguous way, that these marches should be sent on routes that don’t take them past Fortnum and Mason and Cartier and the Ritz, that pass ordinary shops that won’t so inflame them. There’s no fun for them in attacking Safeway or Costcutter, but they love beating up the Ritz.

“The Home Secretary should have a bit more political guts and say that this type of march must be diverted elsewhere.”

Steve Hilton, David Cameron’s enigmatic strategy director, has startled colleagues by proposing the abolition of maternity leave and all consumer rights legislation, as part of an initiative to inject life into Britain’s sluggish economy.Mr Hilton’s crusade against employment legislation also saw him suggest that Mr Cameron just ignore European labour regulations on temporary workers, prompting an exasperated exchange with Jeremy Heywood, Downing Street’s permanent secretary.“Steve asked why the PM had to obey the law,” said one Whitehall insider of a meeting in March to discuss the government’s growth strategy. “Jeremy had to explain that if David Cameron breaks the law he could be put in prison.”Mr Hilton is highly admired by Mr Cameron for his original thinking, but the shaven-headed policy guru’s friends admit that three-quarters of his ideas fail to get off the drawing board – to the relief of colleagues.

i was saying on the other thread or maybe this one, that nobody has called to my door

Tory/LD marginal here and nobody has called, or at least not while I've been in. Labour haven't even sent any leaflets round.

There are as many posters up around me as I've seen in any previous election or maybe more, though; have seen quite a few for each of the 3 (formerly?) main parties, plus Greens, but no UKIP that I recall.

Some of the Tory and Lib Dem posters are comically huge, like a couple of places have Lib Dem diamonds several feet across, just on a suburban fence or the side of their house or w/e. Also the Lib Dem ones say "winning here" which is slightly questionable since they didn't win in 2010 and they're not ahead in the most recent local poll I saw either.

I'm not really sure who'll win scrape into govt locally or nationally (not even sure who I'll vote for), but I am beginning to brace myself for either another 5 years of horrible Tory-led coalitions or 5 years of Labour ever more desperately pretending to be the Tories and having any non-horrible policies defeated (if they think of any), all to daily shrieking front pages about nanny state reds under the bed end of proud tradition of British democracy whatever. What fun we'll have.